The “Indian” TikTok alternative Mitron app is now banned from the Google Play Store. As per the reports, it has been removed due to its weak privacy policies.
Earlier, the app capitalized on Indians’ anger at the TikTok app and crossed 5 million downloads within a month of its launch. It was also welcomed as the perfect answer to the anti-China sentiment growing in India.
However, a few days ago, it was discovered that the source code of the app was developed by a Pakistani firm named QBoxus, and the alleged Indian creator purchased the source code at $34.
Why was the Mitron App removed from the Play Store?
According to CNBCTV18, the app violated Google’s spam and minimum functionality policy, which states that Google will remove an Android app if it’s a copy of another app.
“We don’t allow apps that merely provide the same experience as other apps already on Google Play. Apps should provide value to users through the creation of unique content or services,”
The policy also says that the app should be functional even if on a small level and should not be a clone of any famous app on the platform.
Other flaws in the “Indian” TikTok alternative
Mitron app didn’t have a privacy policy as discovered by us at the time of testing the Indian TikTok alternative. Moreover, the app contained a lot of bugs due to which uploading a video became a difficult task.
Apart from that, Irfan Sheikh, CEO of Qboxus, said that the Indian buyer of the app has made minimal or no changes to the source code of the app. The app’s original name was TicTic and was rebranded in India as the Mitron app.
Clearly, the person who purchased and rebranded the app took perfect advantage of the anti-China and anti-TikTok sentiments growing in the country.
However, the Indian developer would have never expected that the so-called Indian TikTok alternative would come to an end in this way.
We recommend that users uninstall the TikTok rip-off since the app is no longer part of Google Play Protect that safeguards users from harmful apps.
